#metaasks

Also thank you for sharing that poem Tyril wrote 🥰

Aw thank you! So glad (and honored) to be here. Pretty much all VNs outside of Romance Club (a true fave) are conceived as standalone stories nowadays, but I can say that as a team you almost always plan for a sequel in addition to telling a complete and satisfying story as best you can. The end of TCH2 came around while multiple members of the team were being laid off so I unfortunately can't speak to plans that would have happened afterwards. I'll admit there was a particular kind of pain/catharsis in working on a book that was partially about how some loves must inevitably come to an end, but that doesn't mean they are any less meaningful or perfect while they live.

There's a Japanese idiom called mono no aware - the value of ephemera, the eternal mourning of the inherent nature of the world's impermanence. It encompasses many ideas (and if someone is more familiar with the culture and wants to correct me, please do and I'll reblog!), but the one that most applies here is the idea that things have meaning because they end. The standard fairy tale would dictate that Kieran gives up his immortality, or MC gains their own, but that was never the plan, at least not in Book 2. Both Kieran and MC needed to learn to accept each other's limitations and more than that, to celebrate them. Amid a horrible time, we tried to do that too as a team that would no longer be a team very soon.

The TCH series gave me so much. Our incredible art producer convinced me to overcome my own dysphoria and agree to be the facial reference for Fae Longclaw, making the trans metaphor for our beautiful bear queen fully complete. TCH Book 1 was the first book I ever worked on at PB (in the QA phase, which allowed me to get a head start on the lore bible for the series), and working on TCH2 was and continues to be a highlight of my career. I have so much admiration for the book's lead writer and am honored that I still get to work with them on our own all new project.

The first advice I can give is that there's nothing wrong with planning as long as you stay curious and keep exploring! Frank Herbert spent almost a decade planning for Dune and that book is a masterclass in worldbuilding (at least to me.) [Do not get me started on the movies failing to live up to the majesty. Timothée is the perfect Paul but the rest is frustrating as hell. He is not a hero godsdamit and Chani deserves better!!]

N.K. Jemisin (whose work I also highly recommend, if you haven't checked her out yet) has a very useful framework for thinking about the logic of a speculative world that I think can really help you move through blocks in your planning. I used it a lot to "stress test" the lore additions we were discussing for Blades 2 & 3, especially when it came to building the multiple afterlives. The dwarves, for example, have faced so much racial cleansing that they're very worried about their culture disappearing so their idea of a positive afterlife is becoming part of a whole that has a shared memory that can't be destroyed, while their greatest fear is the destruction of the soul before it can reach that point of unity. (You can take a look at Jemisin's original presentation here.)

In SFF, plot and character tend to work best when they come from the world you built rather than sitting on top of it. Let their position in the world be a fundamental part of them, either negative or positive, and it becomes a lot easier to generate complications and connections. Say your main character comes from a warrior culture. What kind of warriors are they? A cavalry based fighting style is going to be a lot about picking the right battlefield, which means they might favor curiosity and even caution, while a stealth based culture might look down on people who insist on taking up a lot of space. Sure you could write the most badass rogue assassin around in that world, but it might be more fun and be a bigger source of conflict if they don't have the qualities their cultures prize. (This is part of why I think Aerin resonates for so many people - in many ways, he's everything a Valleros is not, but just enough of him tends that way that he's got a really lovely, angsty push-pull.)

Also, a purely mercenary thing but if you plan on trying to do tradpub rather than self pub do not plan your books as a series. They can be very difficult to sell unless the writer is established and there's nothing more heartbreaking than an orphaned book. :( (That doesn't mean you can't plan sequels, but make sure it works as a satisfying standalone.)

Will you be more on tumblr? Any creative work to share or just interacting with us Fans.

You're welcome because we are a cool, small fandom with our own events

Hello! I'm honored and will certainly stay as long as y'all will have me because you are, indeed, a very cool fandom, but I do want to make sure this is still a safe space for y'all to criticize the art without pausing to wonder if my feelings would be hurt.